Radar Altimetry Confirms Global Warming Is Affecting Polar Glaciers

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/03/060317112333.htm

Source: European Space Agency

Posted: March 21, 2006

Radar Altimetry Confirms Global Warming Is Affecting Polar Glaciers

Scientists have confirmed that climate warming is changing how much water remains locked in the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets, according to an article published in the Journal of Glaciology.

Using radar altimeter data from ESA’s ERS-1 and ERS-2, Jay Zwally, a scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, and his colleagues mapped the height of the ice sheets and found there was a net loss of ice from the combined sheets between 1992 and 2002 and a corresponding rise in sea level.

Polar ice plays a crucial role in regulating global climate because it reflects about 80 percent of the incoming sunlight. If the ice caps over the polar ocean melt, the ocean water would absorb a large part of the radiation energy, which would lead to further melting of the ice and further warming of the climate.

According to the NASA study, published in the March edition, 20 billion net tonnes of water are added to oceans each year as a result of Greenland’s ice sheet gaining some 11 billion tonnes of water annually, while Antarctica loses about 31 billion tonnes per year.

<SNIP>

gone. Maybe that's what chem trails are trying to do, since they supposedly contain some suspended metals. How come nobody's out there catching that fresh water before it's wasted?

if Antarctica has a larger net loss of ice than the Arctic, would the ocean level of the southern hemisphere be higher than the ocean level of the northern hemisphere? In other words, because of the rotation of the earth, would the oceans behave similarly to the atmosphere at the equator?

Gravity has a big effect, too. Some places on the earth have more or less than the standard 1 G of gravity, and this directly effects the sea level in those places and places surrounding them.